Tasty And Healthy: The Slurrp Farm Story Shauravi Malik and Meghana Narayan, co-founders of Wholsum Foods Pvt Ltd always had an objective for all their products- that it should be both healthy and tasty for children.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.
Shauravi Malik and Meghana Narayan, co-founders of Wholsum Foods Pvt Ltd (makers of millet-based children's food brands Slurrp Farm and Mille) always had an objective for all their products- that it should be both healthy and tasty for children.
Reaching out to customers through all channels, D2C was an important path which helped them connect more closely with mothers with young children in India - particularly during Covid when they could not do events in person. It is this direct interaction with their community of moms that helped them refine their products and come up with new ones. One example being the pancake range – something they came up with when a mother shared her insight about how she had tried to use their cereals to make pancakes.
They work with several e-commerce platforms, as well as delivery and CRM partners. Both their brands- Slurrp Farm and Millé currently retail in India through www.slurrpfarm.com and millesupergrain.com, as well as leading e-commerce and quick commerce platforms such as Amazon, Big Basket, First Cry, and Swiggy Instamart amongst others. Products are also available across leading modern trade stores in India and through partners, as well as online, in the UAE, US and UK.
Slurrp Farm has now been in the market for seven years and last year the company won the Amazon Global accelerator. Through them they entered the US, U.K. and Europe markets. They also have a presence in UAE and Singapore through partners on the ground. India is the mainstay of their business. For Slurrp Farm, the appeal is very strong for the Indian mother.
"We noticed a growing demand for millets in global geographies and our latest brand Millé brings the health conscious consumer fabulous, sustainable and healthy food options for every meal. It has received strong customer reviews from people of all backgrounds and nationalities," Malik told us.
As a food brand, offline physical stores are a core part of their channel thinking. During Covid they had paused their offline channel, and have now relaunched it with depth across 4 major cities, where they are present in 1800 stores. Seeing very strong repeats they intend to invest more in the offline business. Their recently launched second brand Millé makes high plant protein and high fibre food for people of all ages. The founders noticed that many adults eat Slurrp Farm for health and fitness reasons; and also that many diabetics were using Slurrp Farm products as including millets in your diet helps manage diabetes. Millé grew out of the specific insight to cater to this growing audience.
And what about the challenges of building a D2C brand like customer retention, cost of acquisition and order fulfilment?
"We see D2C as an important channel to educate customers about our brand and build relationships. With Slurrp Farm what has helped is staying closely connected to our core community of mothers from the very start. In the current era when most of the D2C brands are getting acquired by House of Brands or Corporate, how is your brand is holding on its own? We're very much a customer focussed brand, and have ambitious plans for making a difference to the way the world eats and building a sustainable business over the next two decades," Narayan explained.
Going forward, for Slurrp Farm they plan to go deeper on their plans to engage their community with creative content around how to feed kids.
Fact Sheet:
· Online platform resulting in maximum revenue: Amazon
· Turnover for FY 2022-23: ARR for March 2023 - Rs 100 crore
· Split between offline and online sales: 80 per cent sales in online channels and 20 per cent sales in offline channels
· Year of Inception: 2017
· Team size: 73
· Customer Repeat ratio: 50 per cent
· Amount of external funding raised: $10m